The Serving and Suffering Community: Week 5 of Ordinary Time
We’re in the season of Ordinary Time - the long stretch of weeks between Pentecost and Advent. If the historic liturgical calendar teaches us to number our days to gain a heart of wisdom, there must be a lot of wisdom to be gained in our regular, working, resting, and worshipping lives. This is the model Christ seemed to have lived, and the church invites us to embrace the same pathway.
LOOK: Simon of Cyrene, Sieger Köder - Source
LISTEN: Little Things With Great Love, The Porter’s Gate, feat. Madison Cunningham - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
Here’s a playlist I made for us a few years ago! Ordinary Time, pt. 1: Worship God in the World and Church
READ: Isaiah 2:10–17; Psalm 89:1–18v; Romans 6:1–11; Matthew 10:34–42
Readings for the rest of the week*: Psalm 11; 1 Kings 17:8-16; Luke 21:12-19; Acts 6:1-8:3; 1 Peter 4:7-19
(The weekly readings during Ordinary Time are a thematic survey from the Daily Office Lectionary curated by Bobby Gross in Living the Christian Year. If you’d prefer to keep track with the Daily Office Lectionary from the 1979 BCP, you can find those passages here.)
PRAY: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for the Fifth Week After Pentecost
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and on earth: Put away from us all hurtful things, and give us those things that are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
READ: An excerpt from The Spacious Path, (p. 213)
SPACIOUS REPENTANCE
There are no shortcuts around suffering on the spacious path, but there is always companionship. In a poem about agape love, the Apostle Paul helps us imagine the kind of love Jesus invites in Luke 10—the kind of love that costs everything. Theologian Fleming Rutledge refers to this powerful vision, writing that “over against all that the world calls ‘love,’” the true nature of Christian love can only be seen from the perspective of the crucifixion. If we believe this to be true (and I do), then we understand that we can’t “virtue signal” cruciform love; we must be transformed by faithful, embodied agape love.
We embody cruciform love when we embrace both suffering and resurrection. Lament articulates the full dialect of love and trains us to speak the same language as the Christ we hear uttering anguish from the cross and the Christ we hear speaking peace to Mary weeping near the open tomb. On his way to the cross, Christ invites all of us who are weary and burnt out on artificial demonstrations of sorrow to bear up under the weight of love with him. When we practice the agape of Christ’s passion, a Rule of Life will make space for us to embody Christ’s resurrection peace in the world.
DO: This week, we’re thinking about what it means to join Christ in his suffering and his serving community. In the safety of God’s presence, ask the Spirit to help you prayerfully sit with the following questions:
In what ways has God gifted you for service to your fellow believers within your community, both inside and outside your church walls?
Have you found a fitting place to use those gifts? What would your next step be to offer your gifts to your community?
The beautiful statement from our title song today is attributed to Mother Teresa: “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Most likely, that proverb comes from this beautiful encouragement:
“We do not need to carry out grand things in order to show a great love for God and for our neighbor.
It is the intensity of love we put into our gestures that makes them something beautiful for God.”
This week, set aside a half-hour this week to listen to Mother Teresa speak at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast. (You might also enjoy my reflection on everyday acts of sacrificial love in this post: Dying the Many Little Deaths of Ordinary Service.)
During Ordinary Time this year, I’ll be curating the weekly themes, music, readings, and practices from four sources:
Sunday lectionary readings from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America).
Weekly themes and select lectionary readings from the excellent devotional guide, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross
Weekly song to meditate from the sacred ecumenical arts collective, The Porter’s Gate because it feels like they’ve curated their discography to coordinate with the themes of Ordinary Time in Living the Christian Year!
Weekly readings and suggested practices from my book The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Way of Jesus in a Fragmented World because I was definitely influenced by Living the Christian Year! While it’s not necessary to purchase the book to follow along with us, I’d be grateful if you did!